Heroic crew keeps Seattle’s last independent needle exchange open / SOS crash left program hanging
“Never back down. Never grow old.”
Shilo Murphy says he used to hear those words from fellow heroin users on the streets of Seattle’s University District. Today, 32 and clean, Murphy shares the motto, and much more, with users whose lives he tries to save from behind a table in a U District alley.
The table, and the struggling program it represents, is not only the only needle exchange north of the city’s Ship Canal, it is now the last independent, community-run needle exchange left in Seattle – a feat that Murphy pulled off with the help of some dedicated volunteers after the county killed the program’s contract last year.
The exchange, which allows addicts to turn in used syringes for new ones to prevent the spread of disease, had been run through Street Outreach Services, a 16-year-old organization that managed the Capitol Hill and U District needle exchanges. But last July, after SOS failed to complete a required audit, Public Health - Seattle & King County cut funding for the organization.
The department started running the Capitol Hill site, which it had already operated two days a week. But Murphy, who had managed both sites for SOS, was determined to keep the U District exchange independent — a critical factor, he says, in maintaining a program that offers users respect and welcomes them as both participants and volunteers in an effort to changes habits and lives.
Though he had lost his own salary, Murphy never missed a beat: Using leftover Public Health supplies and a church office already paid for by SOS, he and longtime volunteers carried on the program unfunded, formed a board, christened their organization the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, and pushed paperwork through the IRS to get nonprofit status in a scant two weeks.
Today, the alliance runs its table behind the U District Post Office three afternoons a week on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with two-hour early-evening shifts Monday and Wednesday. Like SOS before it, the group maintains a needle “banking” system that allows users to drop off more needles than they take so that they don’t have to make a trip for each and every needle — the policy enforced at the six needle exchanges now run by the health department.
“We are desperately poor, but I think we’re providing one of the best services in the city,” says Murphy, who adds he’s gotten “very good at begging” the small donations that are currently keeping the organization afloat. “It’s important to have a community-run exchange,” he says, because “the best work is on a peer-to-peer basis. You’re more likely to listen to a friend and active user than someone just telling what to do.”
“Leila,” a young woman who uses the exchange but asked that her name be withheld, puts it more bluntly: At the health department exchanges, she says, “People really look down their noses. The treatment is not ‘What can we do to help?’ It’s ‘Here’s your stuff. Go away.’”
Possibly as a result of that perception, Murphy says, the number of users at the U District exchange has shot up since the health department cut SOS and took over its Capitol Hill site. But if you imagine that the participants are all bedraggled “Ave rats” in hoodies, you’d be wrong, says Jeff Corey, board president of the alliance. They are young and old, educated and uneducated, professional and working class.
“We have people who have full-time jobs who you’d never guess were injection drug users,” says Corey, who worked for SOS five years. “A young professional woman who works in a downtown office has been actively using for 10 years [and] looks a lot more together by society’s definition than I do, that’s for sure.”
Leila, for instance, once ran her own café and now manages a painting business. She says Murphy’s work is critical because he’s protecting not only users but the general public from HIV, hepatitis C, and the superbug MRSA.
Keeping the needle exchange going “was a really hard time for him, but he believes so hard-core in the purpose,” she says. “All of his using friends back when he used are dead…. His whole strength comes from ‘My friends are dead and I don’t want you and your friends to die.’” n
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The U District needle exchange is located in the alley just off 43rd Street between 15th Avenue and University Way. Its hours are 5-7 p.m. Monday and Wednesday and 1-4 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. SOS continues to operate a Rainier Beach outreach program called Clean Dreams.
PQ “It’s important to have a community-run exchange,” says Murphy, because “the best work is on a peer-to-peer basis. You’re more likely to listen to a friend and active user than someone just telling what to do.”